Tag Archives: charlottesville

In the United States, 2017 was a banner year for fascist and related far right activism. There were arguably the highest levels of public demonstrations by the Right since the last wave of Klan and neonazi activity in the 1980s and ‘90s. A main driver was the Alt Right, a new, digitally focused approach to White nationalism that has caught the cultural zeitgeist. It acted in tandem with the Alt Lite, an offshoot movement that shares enthusiasm for Trump, xenophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia, anti-Leftism, Far Right conspiracy theories, and “fake news,” but stops short of open White nationalism and allows people of color, Jews, and gay men to participate.

The past year has also been marked by clashes with left-wing protestors, who have been broadly labeled “antifa” (short for antifascist). Although antifa have been around as long as fascism has, and broad popular resistance surged in response to Trump’s election, the name has come to be used by the press and others to cover anyone who attends protests against the Far Right.

The Far Right events of 2017—starting with pro-Trump and “Free Speech” rallies in January, and then morphing into support for Confederate memorials, as well as Islamophobic and “Anti-Marxist” rallies—are notable. Especially during the period between March and June, the Alt Right and other open White Nationalists, Alt Light activists, Patriot movement paramilitaries, and Trumpist Republicans worked together on the streets in numerous cities. The most infamous incident occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, when, after the “Unite the Right” rally was cancelled, a fascist rammed his car into an antiracist march, killing one person and injuring at least nineteen others.

In tandem with right-wing action taken in the streets, the Alt Lite has been able to directly influence mainstream conservatives. Two of Trump’s appointees, Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, had ties to White nationalists and fascists (although both lost their positions soon after Charlottesville) and Alt Lite media representatives received White House press passes.

It was also a year where the political impact of digital platforms has come into clear prominence, including memes, discussion boards like 4chan, and Trump’s apparent favorite, Twitter. The landscape of our society has changed so much that a pizza company took to Twitter to distance themselves from neonazis who have embraced it. Additionally, a video game where players shoot Nazis—which just a few years ago would have been considered meaningless entertainment based on a banal theme—is now both a subject of controversy and taken seriously as a work of political commentary.

Even with so much of the political action occurring online, college campuses became main physical sites of conflict, with White nationalist flyering campaigns and a focus by various Far Right figures to get speaking engagements, which were invariably met by raucous protests.

Analyzing the Far Right mobilization that occurred in 2017 can inform social justice movement strategy as we enter year two of the Trump administration. In presenting this long list of events on the timeline below, there is unavoidably a strong subjective choice as to what has been included. History will no doubt be written differently: important things will be forgotten, while others—currently overlooked—will be added. But I do feel confident that this is a fair enough representation of how 2017 appeared at the time to those of us who were paying close attention as the U.S. fascist movement bobbed and weaved.

January

3rd: Director John Carpenter denounces antisemitic interpretations of his cult movie They Live, saying it “is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism. It has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world, which is slander and a lie.”

10th: Dylann Roof is sentenced to death for murdering nine Black bible study participants at Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel AME Church in June 2015. Roof had hoped to incite a race war with his actions.

13th: Alt Right figure Mike Enoch, who runs the internet platform The Right Stuff, is doxxed. It is revealed that his real name is Mike Peinovich, he works in tech, lives on Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side, and is married to a Jewish woman.

16th:

Alt Right leader Richard Spencer launches his new website AltRight.com.

In response to a pressure campaign against Richard Spencer’s headquarters in Whitefish, Montana, Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormercalled for an armed march against the town’s Jewish residents on this date. He had proclaimed, “We will be busing in skinheads from the Bay Area.” Before the march, Anglin said he would postpone it, but about 50 antifascists assemble in town just in case.

19th: The Alt Lite “DeploraBall” is held in Washington, DC on the eve of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration. Organized by Jeff Giesea and Mike Cernovich, attendees include Jack Posobiec, Gavin McInnes, and Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke. Alt Right figure “Baked Alaska” (Anthime Gionet) and Richard Spencer are uninvited for their political views. Scuffles break out with counter-protestors outside the event.

20th:

A large “black bloc” with hundreds of participants careens through the city during the protests against Trump’s inauguration. Eventually 230 members are kettled and arrested, including journalists and street medics; in an unprecedented event, all are charged with felonies and face the possibility of 70­–80 year sentences. Members of the Oath Keepers leadership are present and witness some of the events of the day, although they do not become involved. Separately, Richard Spencer is giving a recorded interview when a masked man punches him in the face. This becomes a viral internet video, which initiates a public discussion of if it is okay to “punch a Nazi.”

Protests break out at the University of Washington in Seattle against a Milo Yiannopoulos talk. Joshua Dukes is shot as he tries to deescalate a fight. Elizabeth and Marc Hokoana are arrested and accused of having come to the protest in order to provoke a conflict.

21st: Worldwide Women’s March protests.

26th: Actor Shia LaBeouf is arrested for scuffling with a neonazi at the He Will Not Divide Us installation at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. This video live stream (that was supposed to run 24-hours a day) soon becomes overrun by various Alt Right activists, including many White nationalists, who use it to spread propaganda. LaBeouf is forced to move the installation multiple times.

27th: Trump fails to mention Jews in his Holocaust Remembrance Day statement.

28th: Starting with New York City’s JFK, airports become the site of protests against Trump’s “Muslim ban,” which prevented people from seven predominately Muslim countries from entering the US—even if they had valid visas and were temporarily out of the country. Over the week, thousands of people join in as the airport protests spread around the country

A hundred people protest at the new headquarters of Richard Spencer’s think tank National Policy Institute (NPI) in Alexandria, Virginia.

February

1st: A Milo Yiannopoulos talk at Berkeley is cancelled due to safety concerns after a militant protest. It had been rumored he was going to name undocumented students at the school. This initiates a long discussion in the mainstream media about antifa and Free Speech that continues all year, and marks the beginning of many conflicts on campuses.

2nd:Clashes in New York City between Proud Boys and protesters at a Gavin McInnes talk at NYU. McInnes is reportedly hit with pepper-spray earlier that evening then has his talk is cut short after he calls the dean a “beta male cuck.”

9th:

Frank Ancona, the Imperial Wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights, is killed; his body is later found on the bank of a river near Belgrade, Missouri. His wife and stepson are charged in his death.

Augusta University president released a statement decrying the appearance of Identity Evropa flyers on campus. This fascist Alt Right group fliers campuses across the nation as part of “Project Siege.” Many White nationalist groups and projects focus on flyering colleges as well, including Vanguard America, Atomwaffen Division, The Right Stuff, Daily Stormer, and AltRight.com. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has tracked over 329 flyering incidents since March 2016, with a spike in February 2017.

10th: Michael Strickland, who antagonized a Black Lives Matter rally in July 2016 in Portland, Oregon before pulling a gun on the crowd, is convicted of menacing and disorderly conduct. He is later sentenced to 40 days in jail, to be served on weekends.

18th: Richard Spencer is thrown out of International Students for Liberty Conference, a libertarian gathering in Washington, DC.

20th: Employees at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri arrive to find over 100 headstones vandalized. On February 25, a Philadelphia Jewish cemetery is similarly vandalized.

21st: Milo Yiannopoulos resigns from Breitbart after his statements seeming to support sex between adult men and young teenage boys are publicized. He is dis-invited from Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and his book deal with Simon & Schuster is cancelled.

22nd: Adam Purinton shouts “Get out of my country!” before shooting three men at a bar in Olathe, Kansas. Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian immigrant, is killed.

23rd: Steve Bannon speaks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Richard Spencer is kicked out. Milo Yiannopoulos had been scheduled to speak, but was uninvited beforehand.

March

2nd: Charles Murray is prevented from speaking at Middlebury College in Vermont by students. Murray is the co-author of the 1994 book The Bell Curve, which was widely denounced as a racist text which sought to justify racial differences in intelligence.

3rd: Deep Rai, a Sikh and U.S. citizen who was born in India, is shot in his driveway in suburban Seattle. His White assailant yelled, “Go back to your own country.” Sikh men are frequent targets of hate crimes because of the distinctive clothing they wear.

4th: The March 4 Trump is the first of several nationwide Far Right rallies which occur through June 10. They draw a new coalition of Trumpist Republicans, Alt Lite and Alt Right activists, Patriot movement paramilitaries, and fascists. Notable March 4 Trump events include Lake Oswego, Oregon (a suburb of Portland), where Three Percenters joined by a well-known Klan member. In Denver, neo-Nazis joined Three Percenters and Islamophobic groups. A second clash in Berkeley occurs, which is memorable for Kyle Chapman coming dressed in body armor and photographed wielding a stick, which turned into the meme “Based Stickman.” This inspired an Alt Right uniform, and more militant rightist action.

8th: The California Highway Patrol (CHP) releases a 2,000 page report on the June 2016 clash at the California State Capitol in Sacramento which pit hundreds of antifascists against a much smaller number of Nazi skinheads who attempted to hold a demonstration under the name of the Traditionalist Worker Party. Fourteen people were wounded, including seven stabbing victims. The CHP recommends that 106 people be charged with 68 felonies and 514 misdemeanors. Eventually four arrest warrants are issued: three for antifascists and one for a fascist.

13th: NPI is stripped of its tax exempt status as a non-profit for failing to file proper paperwork.

20th: Timothy Caughman is killed by James Jackson in New York City. Jackson, who is White, allegedly told police that he came to the city to kill as many Black men as he could find. He told a newspaper that he read the Daily Stormer; he also subscribed to YouTube video channels for Richard Spencer’s NPI and Radix.

22nd: A former church owned by Craig Cobb is burned down in Nome, North Dakota. Cobb had repeatedly bought property in small Midwestern towns to attempt to establish a White enclave, most famously in Leith, North Dakota.

23rd: A wave of more than 150 bomb threats against Jewish community centers and schools, which started in January, end with the arrest of a teenage hacker in Israel. Previously, a disgraced journalist, Juan Thompson, was arrested for making at least a dozen of the threats in an attempt to frame his ex-girlfriend.

24th: Alex Jones apologizes to the owner of Comet Ping Pong in Washington, DC for promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The conspiracy held that children were part of a sex trafficking ring that involved the restaurant and a number of Democratic Party members.

25th: The MAGA (“Make American Great Again”) march is the second nationwide pro-Trump event this month. Two thousand attend a Huntington Beach, California march. There, the DIY Division (later renamed the Rise Above Movement), a fascist group that includes members of the Hammerskins, attacks a much smaller group of antifa and press. An antiracist counter-protest in Phoenix draws 40 armed participants. A Philadelphia march, which includes many White nationalists, is overwhelmed by antifascists.

April

8th: Richard Spencer leads a demonstration in Washington, DC opposing Trump’s missile strike the day before against an airbase controlled by the Syrian regime.

15th: A “Patriots Day Free Speech Rally” in Berkeley draws 500 participants after a national right-wing campaign to mobilize supporters. It includes seig-heiling fascists who appear alongside Patriot movement activists, such as Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, who is a speaker. About an equal number of counterprotestors fail to stop the rally from marching into downtown Berkeley. Identity Evropa leader Nathan Domigo is filmed punching a woman, which becomes a right-wing internet hit. The day is considered a great victory for the right and marks a turning of the tables against antifa for the moment.

18th:

Richard Spencer speaks at Auburn University in Alabama. Matthew Heimbach and other members of the Traditionalist Worker Party attend, marking the end of a riff between the two. The rally ends with some of the fascists being chased away by the crowd.

An SPLC-led lawsuit is initiated against Daily Stormer’s Andrew Anglin for harassing a Jewish family in Whitefish, Montana. By June, Anglin had raised $150,000 for his defense.

21st: Kyle Chapman “Based Stickman” announces the formation of the FOAK (Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights), a street-fighting group affiliated with the Proud Boys.

26th: Allen Scarsella is sentenced to 15 years for shooting five at Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis in 2015. Scarsella was active on 4chan and sympathized with the Three Percenters.

An annual parade in Portland, Oregon’s Montavilla neighborhood had been cancelled because of an anonymous threat. In its place Patriot Prayer held a Free Speech rally, which was attended by White nationalists such as Identity Evropa, and briefly by Mayor Ted Wheeler. Jeremy Christian attends and taunts the counter-protest by yelling “ni**er” and sieg heiling them. Organizers ask him to leave, but he is photographed shaking hands with participants.

The first major fascist-led rally of the year is held in Pikeville, Kentucky by the Nationalist Front. Participating groups include the Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America, the National Socialist Movement, and the League of the South, as well as Alt Right figure Mike Enoch. About 150 people attend, and there is an equal sized counter-protest.

Controversy erupts after a photo, taken in March, is made public of Alt Lite media figures Cassandra Fairbanks and Mike Cernovich in White House briefing room making the “OK” hand gesture. This has been adopted by both the Alt Lite and Alt Right.

May

1st:

Far Right groups harass May Day demonstrations across the country. In New York City Alt Lite activists set off flares and attempt to disrupt speakers in Union Square. In Austin, Patriot movement activists and others are armed and prevent a left-wing march. In Nashville, May Day organizers report multiple death threats, and they are outnumbered five-to-one at their rally.

Start of pro-Confederate memorial rallies. In New Orleans, supporters carry weapons to their May 1 event.

5th: Emails from French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron are leaked to 4chan in an attempt to throw the election to the Far Right party Front National. Alt Lite figure Jack Posobiec helps popularize the leak.

6th:

Matt Furie, creator of Pepe the Frog, releases a one-page cartoon strip depicting Pepe’s funeral in an attempt to combat his usurpation by the Alt Right. Furie later retains a law firm which writes cease and desist letters, issues digital copyright takedown notices, and initiates lawsuits to enforce his intellectual property claims.

Alt Right members who attempt to attend a Trumpist rally at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul are turned away by both rally organizers and anti-fascists.

7th:

Marine LePen of the Far Right party Front National is defeated two-to-one in the French presidential election by neoliberal Emmanuel Macron.

A second demonstration in New Orleans, Louisiana in support of keeping Confederate memorials draws a range of right-wing actors from Oath Keepers to neonazis. A protest for their removal draws 700.

12th: Canadian Alt Right figure Lauren Southern is detained in Italy for participating in an attempt to block a Doctors Without Borders ship which was searching for refugees who ran into trouble while crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa.

13th:

The first of three unpermitted torch lit rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia is held by Richard Spencer.

The first “Free Speech” rally in Boston, Massachusetts is held by Alt Lite and Patriot movement activists.

19th: Devon Arthurs, a former member of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division who converted to Islam, is arrested for killing two of his roommates, Jeremy Himmelman and Andrew Oneschuk, who were said to be members. A fourth man, Florida National Guard Private Brandon Russell, is arrested for possessing bomb-making materials; he pleads guilty in September.

25th: A demonstration in New York City against Muslim feminist Linda Sarsour giving the commencement at the CUNY School of Public Health draws a variety of actors. They include Milo Yiannopoulos, Islamophobe Pamela Geller, right-wing Zionist Dov Hikind, Gavin McInnes, and members of Patriot Prayer.

26th: In Portland, Oregon, Jeremy Christian kills two men, Ricky Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, by slashing their necks; a third man is also slashed, but survives. The three had intervened against Christian to stop his racist and Islamophobic tirade directed at two young Black women on a light rail.

June

3rd: White nationalist writer Bob Whitaker dies. His most famous work is the “Mantra,” which is the source of the racist slogan “anti-racist is code word for anti-white.”

4th: In the aftermath of the the two murders on May 26, Patriot Prayer refuses to cancel a “Trump Free Speech Rally” in Portland, Oregon. It is attended by hundreds, including Patriot movement groups such as the Oath Keepers and American Freedom Keepers (AFK), as well as Alt Lite activists and Identity Evropa and Traditionalist Worker Party. A much larger group of counter-demonstrators surround the rally on all sides. An AFK member attracts media attention when he is photographed helping law enforcement arrest a counter-protester.

10th:

Islamophobic group Act for America holds a nationwide March Against Sharia, with events in over twenty cities. This is the height of the street coalition of various Far Right forces, with Alt Right and Alt Lite activists, Trumpist Republicans, and Patriot movement groups working side-by-side. In many cities they are met by large counter-protests, which start to turn the tables again against Far Right street mobilizations.

In Houston, a march is called against a hoax antifa rally to remove a statue of Texas founder Sam Houston. However, hundreds attend the Far Right rally. There, a Patriot movement activist chokes a White nationalist from behind during an argument. This sets off an online flame war between the Alt Right and the Oath Keepers, helping to break up the uneasy de facto alliance between the two parties.

14th:

Robert Doggart is sentenced to almost 20 years in prison for threatening to attack Islamberg, a Muslim community in upstate New York.

16th: The play “Julius Caesar” at Shakespeare in the Park in New York City is disrupted by Alt Lite figures Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer. (Conservative media had alleged the play was a call for the assassination of Trump.) Loomer raises over $13,000 for her legal defense for charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct. Local Alt Lite activists repeat the stunt on the play’s closing night two days later.

20th: European Identitarians announce they have chartered a ship, which they name the C-Star, to intercept refuges in the Mediterranean and return them to Africa in order to prevent them from reaching Europe, as well as to block ships returning to Europe which have picked up refugees. The project, called “Defend Europe,” raises $178,000 with support from U.S. White nationalists. However, the voyage runs into numerous difficulties, and ends without picking anyone up or disrupting any rescue ships.

22nd: Edgar Maddison Welch is sentenced to four years for shooting an assault rifle inside of Comet Ping Pong, the Washington, DC restaurant which is where the Pizzagate conspiracy theory is set.

23rd: A Department of Homeland Security program, Countering Violent Extremism, makes public that it has revoked an almost $400,000 grant to Life After Hate—the only group on its initial grant list which was dedicated to reducing Far Right activism. The remaining grants all focus on Muslims. This is widely seen as a move by the Trump administration to turn a blind eye to the White supremacist movement, despite its ongoing legacy of violence and murder.

25th:

In the wake of the June 14 shooting of four people at a Congressional baseball game, dueling rallies are held in Washington, DC. The Alt Lite “Rally Against Political Violence” is organized by Jack Posobiec and attended by Mike Cernovich, Laura Loomer, Cassandra Fairbanks, Lucian Wintrich, followers of Lyndon LaRouche and members of the skinhead gang 211 Bootboys. The larger, openly White nationalist “Freedom of Speech Rally” includes the Traditionalist Worker Party, Identity Evropa, and Richard Spencer.

Identity Evropa activists disrupt an anti-racist seminar in Wilton Manors, Florida. Far Right activists also disrupt two anti-racist trainings in Santa Monica, California in July and early August. In the fall, Berkeley’s Revolution Books, a Maoist bookstore, becomes the target of at least six protests and disruptions in the fall.

26th: Republican Party of Multnomah County, Oregon (which includes Portland) passes a resolution to utilize Patriot movement paramilitary groups the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters for security.

July

1st:

A Far Right rally is held at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. It is supposed to be a counter-protest to what is actually a hoax: an antifa group was allegedly going to desecrate Confederate graves. One participant, Benjamin Hornberger, accidentally shoots himself in the leg during the event.

Proud Boys who are members of the Canadian military are investigated after they disrupt an First Nations ceremony on Canada Day.

2nd: Trump tweets a video of himself as a wrestler beating up a man with a CNN logo on his face. It is revealed the video was created by a man known for racist and antisemitic commentary.

7th:

Fred Perry CEO John Flynn denounces the use of his company’s yellow and black polo shirts as a uniform by the Proud Boys.

Dane Powell is the first person sentenced for the J20 demonstration; he receives four months.

7–8th: The G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany is met by a massive counter-protest. A group of right-wing journalists are attacked after one, Alt Right figure Lauren Southern, attends while wearing a White Nationalist t-shirt.

8th: A small KKK rally in Charlottesville, Virginia is met by a counter-protest of 1,000. Twenty-three are arrested.

13th: Augustus Invictus announces he is leaving the Libertarian Party for the GOP.

14th: Former Milo Yiannopoulos intern Lane Davis allegedly kills his father Charles Davis during a political argument.

15th: A second Islamophobic “Ride for Homeland Security” vehicular demonstration is held outside the Muslim community of Islamberg in upstate New York. Proud Boys, Bikers for Trump, and Patriot movement activists attend. Islamberg is the focus of conspiracy theories which claim it is a jihadist training camp.

21st:

National Security Council staffer Rich Higgins is let go after his a memo he authored, which reflect Far Right conspiracy theories, becomes public. It identifies Trump’s enemies as Islamists, globalists, bankers, and the “deep state.”

A Mother Jones article reveals that wealthy conservative William H. Regnery II is a funder of Richard Spencer.

August

5th: Ernst Zundel dies in Germany. He had helped popularize Holocaust Denial in Canada before being deported to Germany, where he served prison time.

6th: Police allow open fighting between antifa and Patriot Prayer in Portland, Oregon.

11th: On the eve of the “Unite the Right” rally, hundreds attend an unpermitted torch lit rally, led by Richard Spencer, on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. Authorities do not try to stop the march. A small group of counter-protestors are attacked.

12th:

The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia is a turning point for the Alt Right. Organized by Jason Kessler, this rally is supposed to be the coming out party for the White Nationalist wing of the Alt Right. Many prominent movement figures are scheduled to speak, including Richard Spencer, Matthew Heimbach, Mike Enoch, Augustus Invictus, Baked Alaska, and Christopher Cantwell, as well as neoconfederate Michael Hill. Up to 1,000 people attempt to attend. However, police make no attempt to separate the rally participants and counter-protestors, and clashes break out which involve sticks, mace, and rocks as attendees try to enter the park where it is to be held. The chaos is added to by dozens of heavily armed and uniformed militia members who claim they are there as a neutral party. Shortly before the rally is set to begin at noon, police declare an unlawful assembly and disperse both sides. As they leave, a White rally participant (Richard Preston) pulls a gun out and shoots at the feet of a Black counter-protestor (Corey Long) who had turned a can of spray paint into a makeshift flamethrower. A splinter march of Far Right activists goes into the town, and is recorded beating a Black man (Deandre Harris) in a parking garage. After 1:30PM, two seperate anti-racist marches run into each other, and as they turn up a narrow street, a car crashes into the crowd at high-speed. Heather Heyer is killed and at least 19 others are injured. The car backs up and drives off, but is stopped and the driver, James Fields, Jr., who had marched with the Alt Right fascist group Vanguard America, is arrested. Only four people are arrested that day. Afterward a small number of arrests are slowly made, including planned rally speaker Christopher Cantwell; Preston; those who beat Harris (Jacob Scott Goodwin, Daniel Borden, and Alex Michael Ramos)—as well as Long and Harris.

Trump makes the first of several statements on Charlottesville, saying “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides—on many sides.” He does not condemn Far Right groups as such.

Starting on the eve of August 12 and continuing through the week, hundreds of rallies in the United States, as well as around the world, are held in solidarity with antifascists and antiracists at Charlottesville.

13th:

Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler is chased from his press conference by an angry crowd.

Backtracking on his earlier statement, Trump says, “Racism is evil—and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

A Confederate memorial is toppled by protestors in Durham, North Carolina.

15th:

Trump continues to change his statements about Charlottesville. He points his finger at the “Alt Left”—a non-existent group—for violence at Charlottesville. Trump says there were “fine people on both sides” but there is “blame on both sides.”

One of the editors of AltRight.com, Jason Jorjani, leaves the website.

16th:

Heather Heyer’s memorial in Charlottesville, Virginia is broadcast live. Her mother, Susan Bro, asks for people to make her “death count.”

Cloudflare, a service which protects websites from denial of service attacks, terminates the Daily Stormer’s account after CEO Matthew Prince “woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet.” This was just one of many online services which terminated services to White nationalists. Some platforms had taken steps to curtail White nationalist content even before Charlottesville. These included Twitter, Paypal, GoFundMe, Patreon, Soundcloud, Namecheap, and Google Ads. In the run up to Unite the Right, AirBnB cancelled reservations and Facebook took the event page down. Platforms that took action after Charlottesville include Squarespace, GoDaddy, Reddit, Spotify, Discord, SendGrid, Google, and others. Daily Stormer has ended up bouncing around the internet, looking for a URL. It has been hosted by—and removed from—businesses in Albania, Russia, Austria, Iceland, and Hong Kong. It is currently accessible on the dark web via a Tor browser.

Kyle Chapman is charged with felony possession of a weapon, which is his third felony charge in a Three Strikes state. In December he is arrested again while in possession of a potentially lethal weapon, in violation of his bail, which is then increased from $135,000 to $400,000.

Alt Lite figure Jack Posobiec cancels his nationwide “March on Google,” scheduled for August 19, which was to protest Google for firing James Damore. He was let go after circulating a misogynistic, anti-diversity internal memo.

ACLU of California breaks ranks with the national organization over its handling of the Charlottesville.

The anti-immigrant, White nationalist VDARE conference scheduled for April 2018 in Colorado Springs, Colorado is cancelled.

Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler tweets that “Heather Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist. Communists have killed 94 million. Looks like it was payback.” Kessler later claimed he was under the influence of Ambien, Xanax, and alcohol when he wrote the tweet. Richard Spencer says he will not work with Kessler after this.

19th: A Boston Free Speech rally, organized by the Alt Lite, goes ahead despite criticism. It initially featured Augustus Invictus, who had been scheduled to speak at Charlottesville, although he is removed from the speaking list beforehand. Other speakers such as Gavin McInnes cancel. The rally is met by 40,000 counter-protestors.

Trump’s appearance in Phoenix is met by a demonstration of thousands, which police use tear gas to break up. Trump denounces antifa in his speech, saying “You know, they show up in the helmets and the black masks, and they’ve got clubs and they’ve got everything—Antifa!”

ACT for America cancels a second round of nationwide Islamophobic rallies which were scheduled for September 9.

On the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination, members of the New Order hold a public memorial for George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, outside of the shopping center in Arlington, Virginia, where he was killed.

Gavin McInnes formally announces he is leaving Canadian Alt Lite website The Rebel. Co-founder Brian Lilley had left on August 14 after reporter Faith Goldy had sympathetically covered the Charlottesville demonstration and appeared on a podcast affiliated with the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. Goldy is fired on August 18.

Benjamin Davis, leader of the racist prison gang 211 Crew, is found dead in his prison cell. He was suspected of being involved with the 2013 murder of Tom Clements, who was head of the Colorado Department of Corrections.

The contentious Patriot Prayer “Freedom Rally San Francisco” is cancelled by organizer Joey Gibson the day before. Mayor Ed Lee, as well as Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had denounced it, and the ILWU held a port shutdown in protest.

27th:

A number of Far Right activists attend the “March Against Marxism” in Berkeley, organized by Amber Cummings, despite the fact that she cancelled it and called on followers not to come. A large antiracist demonstration is there, including a black bloc. Far Right activists are chased away and scuffles break out; one man is beaten on film, although not seriously injured. Despite the minor nature of the conflict, many mainstream press outlets seize on this as an opportunity to denounce antifa, ending a short honeymoon period after Charlottesville.

Armed Patriot movement paramilitaries come to intimidate an anti-racist protest in Kansas City, Missouri for the third time.

Nathan Damigo leaves as head of Identity Evropa and is replaced by Eli Mosley. By December, Mosely is out and he is replaced by Patrick Casey.

30:

Colbert, Oklahoma police chief Bart Alsbrook is revealed to be a longtime member of the Nazi skinhead group Blood and Honour, and has two neo-Nazi websites registered in his name: ISD Records and NS88 Videos. Alsbrook claims he is the victim of identity theft, but resigns as sheriff.

September

1st:Politico breaks the story that FBI is investigating antifa as “domestic terrorists.” FBI director Christopher Wray confirms this at a November 30 Congressional hearing.

5th: Trump calls for the end of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).

10th: Patriot Prayer holds a demonstration in Vancouver, Washington; about one hundred attend, and are met by 300 counter-protestors. A car tries to run counter-protestors over; the driver is arrested but later released without charges.

12th:

Kenneth Gleason, who is White, is arrested for the random murders of two Black men, Bruce Cofield and Donald Smart, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A Hitler speech is found in Gleason’s residence.

Congress passes a joint resolution urging Trump to “speak out against hate groups that espouse racism, extremism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and White supremacy.” Trump signs it two days later.

13th: FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) releases an analysis of op-eds from six major newspapers after Charlottesville. It says, “Between August 12 and September 12, these papers ran 28 op-eds or editorials condemning the anti-fascist movement known as antifa, or calling on politicians to do so, and 27 condemning neo-Nazis and white supremacists, or calling on politicians—namely Donald Trump—to do so.”

16th: The Mother of All Rallies (MOAR) in Washington, DC is attended by militia and Alt Lite members and attracts up to 1,000 people—far less than the one million which organizers claimed would attend. A demonstration held nearby and at the same time by the Juggalos, protesting their designation as a “hybrid gang” by the FBI, draws many more participants.

19th: Hope Not Hate, a UK group that monitors the Far Right and recently established a US branch, releases reportThe International Alternative Right, based on Patrik Hermansson’s year-long undercover work, which includes damning video recordings.

20th: Augustus Invictus, who was slated to speak at the Charlottesville rally, is expelled from the American Guard. The group was formed by activists involved in Vinlanders, a Nazi skinhead gang, but tries to distance themselves from neo-Nazism.

A speech at Columbia University in New York City by British Islamophobe Tommy Robinson, delivered over Skype since he cannot get a visa to enter the United States, ends early after protestors disrupt it.

A lawsuit is filed on behalf of several counter-protestors at Charlottesville, including several who were injured, for conspiracy to violate their civil rights. White nationalist groups who attended the Charlottesville demonstration are named.

12th: A lawsuit to prohibit paramilitary activities in Virginia is filed on behalf of the Charlottesville’s city government, plus some neighborhood associations and businesses. White nationalists who attended the rally, militia groups who pretended to be neutral peacekeepers, and armed left-wing groups who were present are all named.

20th: Richard Spencer gives a speech at the University of Florida in Gainesville; he is heckled inside while a large demonstration takes place outside. Three of White nationalist attendees—Tyler Tenbrink, Will Fears, and Colton Fears—are arrested for their involvement in a shooting that occurs after the event.

23rd: Military Times releases poll which finds that 25 percent of U.S. troops “have seen examples of white nationalism among their fellow service members.”

27th:

Three members of the racist Aryan Brotherhood gang are sentenced for killing another member in 2011.

The video game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is released; in it, players shoot Nazis in an alternate reality where they won WW2. Alt Right commentators had objected to it, and the game becomes the center of media attention as a work of political commentary.

28th: A hundred people attend a “White Lives Matter” rally in Shelbyville, Tennessee held by the Nationalist Front; member groups the Traditionalist Worker Party, the League of the South, and the National Socialist Movement attend. They are opposed by 200 hundred counter-protesters. A rally in Murfreesboro later that same day is cancelled, but an interracial couple is assaulted afterward in Brentwood by rally participants.

30th: Mike Cernovich speaks at Columbia University in New York City and is met by a large protest. Cernovich’s supporters plant a fake pro-NAMBLA banner in the crowd.

November

1st: Carlos Moreno, Victor Vasquez, and Pamela Marques, who are all Latino, are shot and killed in a Walmart in Thornton, Colorado. The next day Scott Ostrem, who is White, is arrested. His neighbors said he was “very racist towards Hispanics.”

2nd: Robert Mercer announces he will resign as co-CEO of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, which has $45 billion in assets. This came after it was revealed that Breitbart and Milo Yiannopoulos, who he was funding, were in direct contact with White nationalists.

3rd: FOX News’ Tucker Carlson discusses the slogan “It’s Okay to be White,” which was created and popularized by White nationalists on 4chan. In December he retweeted a story from Red Ice, one of the main Alt Right media platforms. This is one of several instances in 2017 when Alt Right slogans and stories have made it directly into mainstream conservative media.

4th: The day of the supposed “Antifa Civil War,” when it was alleged that antifascists were “planning to kill every single Trump voter, Conservative and gun owner.” However, no such event was ever scheduled. The November 4 rumor was the most popular of numerous hoaxes, fake news items, and fake social media accounts that Alt Right and other Far Right activists perpetrated all year.
These included calls for two fake demonstrations (in Houston, Texas and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) which produced real right-wing “counter” demonstrations; numerous fake social media accounts pretending, with varying degrees of seriousness, to be real antifa accounts; fake flyers, one of which called for the murder of white children; a popular doctored photo supposedly of an antifa activist attacking a police officer; and Alex Jones’s claim that the sniper who killed 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas on October 1 had “antifa crap everywhere” in his hotel room. Some of the hoaxes were able to make their way into mainstream conservative news. For example, in July FOX host Jesse Watters interviewed a member of “Boston Antifa”—who was actually an Alt Right activist. In November FOX News reported on the civil war hoax as if it was a real story.

10th: Jack Posobiec doxxes Leigh Corfman and encouraged his followers to harass her at work. Corfman has accused Alabama Senatorial candidate Roy Moore of trying to have sex with her when she was 14.

11th: Independence Day march in Warsaw, Poland, which had become a Far Right event inclusive of fascist groups, draws 60,000. Banners include “Europe will be white” and “Pray for an Islamic Holocaust.” A counter-protest draws 5,000.

12th: Steve Bannon addresses a ZOA (Zionist Organization of America) gathering in New York City. In the audience are Sebastian Gorka and Alt Lite figures Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer.

13th: FBI releases hate crimes statistics for 2016. They show a 4 percent increase generally, and a 19 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes specifically, from the year before. The report is widely criticized for undercounting the number of incidents.

14th: Papa John’s Pizza denounces neo-Nazis in a tweet. The company had been declared the “official pizza of the alt-right” by the Daily Stormer after its CEO criticized protests by NFL players against racism.

17th: Neo-Nazi Brent Luyster is convicted of a triple murder in Washington state.

18th: The Rally for the Republic, hosted by Resist Marxism, is held on the Boston Commons. It is attended by Alt Lite and Patriot movement activists and features Kyle Chapman. A thousand counter-protestors show up.

19th: NPI’s conference is held at a wedding barn under false pretenses, after being cancelled by the Press Club in Washington, DC. The hosts force NPI attendees to leave halfway through when they find out its real purpose.

20th: Buzzfeed reports on allegations of sexual assault against John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), a liberal congressional representative. The information had been fed to them by Mike Cernovich.

22nd: It is announced that Richard Spencer is banned from Europe’s twenty-six country Schengen Area.

25th: New York Times article “A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland,” profiling a Traditionalist Worker Party member, is widely criticized for being overly sympathetic to fascists and normalizing their politics.

27th: Jason Kessler files for a permit to hold a second rally in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12, 2018. On December 11 the city denies it, along with a number of other permit applications.

28th:

Alt Lite figure Lucian Wintrich speaks at University of Connecticut under the White supremacist slogan, “It’s OK to be White.” He is arrested for assault for an incident during the event but his charges are later dropped.

Federal prosecutors in the trial of activists arrested at the Inauguration Day Black Bloc on January 20 (J20) introduce video from Project Veritas as evidence. Videos originating with Far Right paramilitaries the Oath Keepers had also been introduced. The trials, which are being conducted in small groups, started on November 15 and will run through 2018.

29th: Trump retweets videos from the deputy leader of Britain First, a British Islamophobic party. UK Prime Minister Theresa May issues a condemnation.

December

1st: An independent review of the handling of the Charlottesville demonstration is released, finding that the police actions were both inadequate and produced “disastrous results.” On December 18, Charlottesville police chief Alfred Thomas resigns.

2nd: Richard Spencer’s new group, Operation Homeland, which includes former Identity Evropa leader Eli Mosley, hold a Washington, DC demonstration. They are joined by Matthew Heimbach and members of his group. They call for “Kate’s Wall” in the wake of the acquittal of a Mexican citizen for the murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco.

4th: The Supreme Court approves Trump’s revised “Muslim ban,” targeting travel to the United States from six Muslim-majority countries.

6th: Michael Wolfe receives a 15 year sentence for vandalizing and leaving bacon inside of a Titusville, Florida mosque.

7th: William Edward Atchison kills two students, Francisco I. Fernandez and Casey J. Marquez, inside of a high school in Aztec New Mexico, before killing himself. He had been a poster on 4chan and Daily Stormer discussion boards.

9th: A Patriot Prayer anti-immigrant rally in Portland, Oregon draws both Alt Lite and Alt Right activists. It is one of the last cities where this coalition of White nationalists and more moderate Trumpists are still taking the streets together.

18th: After a public campaign by users to “Ban the Nazis,” Twitter starts a purge of accounts primarily related to White nationalists, saying users “may not affiliate with organizations that—whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform—use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes.” Some accounts are suspended immediately, while others happen in the following week. They include the American Nazi Party, American Renaissance and Jared Taylor, the League of the South and Michael Hill, Occidental Dissent, Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement, Vanguard American and affiliated accounts, the Traditionalist Worker Party, Generation Identity accounts, Keystone United, Proud Boys Magazine, Eli Mosley, Nordic Frontier, and Wife With a Purpose. Also suspended are Britain First and two leading members, Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding; Trump had retweeted videos from them, meaning these were now unviewable from his Twitter feed. Many prominent white nationalists, such as Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler, remain unaffected. Non-White nationalist suspensions include those associated with the Jewish Defense League and the New Black Panther Party.

21st: First group of J20 defendants are acquitted of all charges stemming from protests during the Trump inauguration.

23rd: Buckley and Scott Kuhn-Fricker are murdered in their Reston, Virginia home; Nicholas Giampa, 17, is arrested. He had been dating the Kuhn-Frickers’ daughter until they pushed her to break up with him after they found out Giampa was a neo-Nazi. On Twitterhe interacted with Alt Right fascist groups like Atomwaffen Division, Traditionalist Worker Party, and Vanguard America.

31st: Michael Riehl was killed after a shootout with police in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, near Denver. One officer, Zach Parrish, was also killed, and six people were wounded. Rihel’s Facebook page includes a number of Pepe the Frog images and attacks on diversity.

League of the South is an Alabama-based theocratic, neo-confederate group that has long advocated for southern secession.

Among the groups leading the recent Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia was the League of the South – an Alabama-based theocratic, neo-confederate group that has long advocated for southern secession. League leader Michael Hill was among the scheduled speakers for the planned rally to save a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from removal from a public park. While the rally was cancelled, the League’s presence was well documented by cameras and video. Amidst the televised brawls, some League members were strikingly visible, thanks in part to the white shields with black crosses they carried into the fray. Most notoriously, longtime Florida state chapter leader and League Chief of Staff, Michael Tubbs, a former Green Beret, was ID’d by the Southern Poverty Law Center, based on photos and videos, as on the scene when an African-American counter protester was viciously clubbed, apparently by League members.

Recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia and at the 2017 annual conference of the League of the South held in Wetumpka, Alabama in June, bear out PRA’s warning in 2014 that threats of violence from the League of the South need to be taken seriously. The League’s involvement in Charlottesville, and several other public struggles over the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces, suggests that these will continue to be symbolic and actual battle grounds of choice – perhaps with escalating levels of violence.

We reported in 2014, that Hill had published an essay titled, “A Bazooka in Every Pot,” that advocated for the deployment of death squads featuring “three-to-five-man” units with a hair-raising mission: “The primary targets will not be enemy soldiers,” Hill wrote. “Instead, they will be political leaders, members of the hostile media, cultural icons, bureaucrats, and other of the managerial elite without whom the engines of tyranny don’t run.”

Hill followed-up with another essay in which he calls on the young men of “Christendom” to become “citizen-soldiers” in the battles against the tyranny of our time. He saw himself and his comrades as part of a long line of such men, invoking historic battles with Islamic armies going back to the Battle of Tours in the 8th century. His role models for warriors for Christendom, however, are the White Westerners who fought against Black liberation movements in Southern Africa in the 1970s. “So if Western men in past times were willing to fight for their civilization in remote areas of the world,” he asked, “shouldn’t we expect them to be just as willing to fight for that civilization here at its very heart—the South?”

League of the South is a political home for violent, would-be revolutionaries who intend to make their vision a reality.

Unsurprisingly, the League is a political home for violent, would-be revolutionaries who intend to make their vision a reality. Michael Tubbs, for example, was arrested in 1989 with arms, explosives, and a hit list that included newspapers, television stations, and businesses owned by Jews and Blacks. He served four years in prison, but Hill and other league leaders nevertheless allowed Tubbs to stay on as a League leader in Florida, saying he’d “paid his debt to society.”

Hill and Tubbs formed a secret paramilitary unit in 2014. But by the League’s 2017 annual conference, Hill revealed that they are now openly forming an army. While it is unclear how far along they may be in creating a fighting force of any consequence, Hill spoke convincingly about his intentions in his speech titled, “The War Has Already Begun!” In it, he declared that we are currently in a period of relative calm before the storm of a race war in the United States. He claimed, to applause, that over the past 40 years, “the number of black on white violent crimes and murders has been astronomical. There is a war against YOU, White men and White woman (sic) in the streets of our cities!” (Unsurprisingly, keynote speaker David Duke, a longtime leader of far right, white supremacist factions sounded similar themes.)

Hill said that the current war has essentially been going on for two generations and it began with that “accursed thing called the Civil Rights Movement.” He spoke nostalgically of a time when the South was “White man’s land” and of the need to take it back as a “righteous cause.”

He spoke nostalgically of a time when the South was “White man’s land” and of the need to take it back as a “righteous cause.”

He spoke of how White culture, “stretching back into the mist of antiquity, is that of a warrior.” Being a warrior is a “calling,” he said, and he wanted the warriors at the conference to emulate confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and his “favorite,” Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. The latter was, of course, a winking reference to the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, and was greeted with knowing laughter and appreciative applause.

He went on to speak of needing to learn to organize, and to train in the necessary skills for the war. To that end, he noted that the present war is not like traditional wars, but that the battlefield is “everywhere” and the enemy is legion and “does not necessarily wear a uniform, and sometimes you can tell the enemy because the skin he is wearing becomes his uniform.”

He insisted that after the Confederate flags and statues currently at issue, “when they finish with the stone and the fabrics… they are coming after you. Don’t ever doubt that.” He characterized those who will come for them “as the children of the father of lies” and that his audience and allies beyond are the children of “the living God.” He said that they are living in a biblically prophesized scenario in which God’s people fight it out to the end with the forces of Satan. But they will win.

He spoke openly about how the League has created a body he calls the Southern Defense Force, and that it will be not just a modern Confederate army but will actually be the “Army of the True Living God.” In closing he offered-up what he calls an Old Testament vision of “destroying the enemies of our land, our people and of our God.”

Images from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville continue to circulate social media, including this Twitter post showing League of the South founder Michael Hill assaulting another person.

If the League members on the scene in Charlottesville acted with a wanton aggression, it might be because Michael Hill has long been preparing them for battle with what he sees as “demonic” forces, particularly Black people. Tubbs is featured in cell phone videos taken at the scene of one of the bloodiest incidents of the mob violence at the march. The beating of a young African American and Charlottesville public school employee, Deandre Harris, according to the SPLC, was carried out by members of the Florida chapter of the League of which Tubbs is still chapter president. “I was chased and beat with metal poles,” Harris wrote on Facebook. “I was knocked unconscious repeatedly. Every time I went to stand up I was knocked back down. If it was not for my friends that I came with I would have been beaten to a pulp.”

One does not have to believe that the small League of the South and their allies are capable of being the military arm of political secession, let alone an effective End Times Army of God, to recognize that they are intent on and capable, as we have seen in Charlottesville, of wreaking havoc in the furtherance of their perceived war with much of the rest of society.

From the Streets of Charlottesville to the Corridors of the Capitol, White Nationalism is On the March

(BOSTON) The U.S. Far Right has killed nearly 450 people since 1990. Heather Heyer of Charlottesville, Virginia is the latest casualty of White nationalism. We can honor the sacrifice of the dead and wounded by matching their courage in standing down similar rallies planned for the weeks ahead. Equally important, we can defend members of our communities who are under attack. People of good conscience, regardless of party affiliation, faith tradition, or identity should look upon Charlottesville as a call to moral action in defense of humanity and rejection of White supremacy.

Saturday’s Unite the Right rally was designed, over months, to be the largest gathering of its kind in at least a decade, and was successful in bringing together disparate elements of the Far Right. We should reflect on the deep connection between antisemitism and White supremacy and understand why women, people of color, people with disabilities, religious minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people are often targeted first. This is bigger than Charlottesville. White nationalism should not be excused as an expression of “hate” or “ignorance;” it is a strategically coordinated movement with a political agenda.

Not all White nationalists dress up in costume and give Nazi salutes. Whether they are chanting “Jews will not replace us” at a torch lit rally or proposing regressive legislation on voting rights, the right to assembly, or other keystones of a liberal democracy, we must stop their momentum. When our President condemns neonazis only reluctantly and temporarily, it’s not courageous; it is too little too late, and only serves to further embolden the Right. It is an open secret that the violent White nationalists on the streets of Charlottesville (and many other cities) were emboldened by candidate Trump’s presidential campaign, which gave voice to many of their own dangerous views. Their support is not only for Trump’s platitudes but also for the president’s policies. So while we welcome the denunciation of White supremacy from various corners of Congress, we require more from our elected officials. We call on them to uphold our common humanity as they consider policy changes to immigration, health care, education, and the equitable distribution of taxes needed to fund vital public services. We need to remain on alert for “law and order” rhetoric used to justify police and state aggression. We have no intention of stopping bigotry on the streets only to suffer its continued codification in the laws of our land.

The ostensibly “extremist” ideas given expression in Charlottesville must not be allowed to make racist federal policy initiatives appear moderate by comparison. As PRA’s late founder Jean Hardisty presciently stated in a 2005 essay “Wrong About the Right”:

The right has not been afraid to propose extreme positions, knowing they will be pushed back to more moderate ones still well to the right of the status quo. We’ve seen this in almost every policy fight since 1980. By boldly taking stands that are far outside the mainstream, the right has managed to pull the mainstream to the right, which is why it is now perceived as speaking for the majority.

The activists, faith leaders, and everyday people who stood up to armed and violent White nationalists in Charlottesville are the heroes of this still-unfolding story. Their courage stands in stark contrast to the cowardice on display in Washington, D.C. Theirs is the moral conscience of a people that refuses to be divided. Who we can be together will determine whether the U.S. protects and advances the principles of democracy, justice, and pluralism or succumbs to the forces that threaten to unmake them.

Saturday, August 19, 2017 will be a National Day of Action Against White Supremacy. PRA will be here, as it has for more than three decades, monitoring threats and revealing what each of us can do to advance justice and democracy in these turbulent times.